Johnson's Third FISA Try: Three-Year Extension, Zero Warrants

Two failed votes. Five days left. And the new bill still lets the FBI search your data without a warrant.

State of Surveillance Editorial Team

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TL;DR: Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled his third attempt at reauthorizing FISA Section 702 on April 24, 2026, after two previous votes crashed and burned this month. The new bill extends warrantless surveillance of 350,000 foreign targets through 2029, adds criminal penalties of up to five years for willful abuse, requires monthly FBI reports and a GAO audit, and gives Congress access to FISA Court proceedings. What it doesn't do (again) is require the FBI to get a warrant before searching Americans' communications swept up in that collection. The April 30 deadline is five days out. The House Rules Committee meets Monday. And the Fourth Amendment is still waiting in the hallway.

What the Bill Actually Says

Johnson's third swing at 702 reauthorization dropped April 24, and here are the specifics [1]:

  • Three-year extension: Section 702 authority continues through 2029. Not the 18 months privacy hawks wanted in the first vote. Not the five years hawks wanted in the second. Split the difference.
  • Criminal penalties: Up to five years in prison for willful abuse of 702 queries. This is new. Whether DOJ would ever actually prosecute its own is a separate question.
  • Monthly reports: The FBI must submit monthly reports to a Civil Liberties Protection Officer detailing how it uses 702 data against Americans.
  • GAO audit: The Government Accountability Office gets one year to complete a full audit of the program.
  • Congressional access: Lawmakers get access to FISA Court proceedings within 60 days of this bill passing. That's significant: FISA Court proceedings have been almost entirely off-limits to most members of Congress.

On paper, it's the most reform-flavored 702 bill Johnson has put forward. In practice, it's window dressing around the same core problem.

What's Missing: The Warrant Question

Here it is again. The same gap. The same dodge.

Section 702 authorizes the NSA to collect communications of foreign targets abroad, roughly 350,000 of them. But those foreign targets talk to Americans. They email Americans. They text Americans. And all of that gets scooped up and stored in databases that the FBI can search without a warrant.

No probable cause. No judge. No individualized suspicion. Just an FBI analyst typing a name into a search box and pulling up whatever the NSA vacuumed in.

Johnson's new bill does not change this. At all.

Instead, the bill offers monthly reports and the threat of criminal penalties. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) put it plainly: the bill "continues the disastrous policy of trusting the FBI to self-police" [1].

He's right. And the track record of the FBI policing itself on 702 is catastrophic.

The Abuse Track Record

This isn't theoretical. The FBI has been caught abusing warrantless 702 searches over and over. Here's the documented record [3][4]:

  • A sitting US senator: The FBI ran warrantless 702 queries on a member of the United States Senate.
  • Journalists: FBI agents searched 702 databases for information on reporters.
  • 6,800 Social Security numbers: Bulk warrantless queries run against thousands of Americans' SSNs.
  • 19,000 congressional campaign donors: The FBI searched 702 data on people who donated to political campaigns.
  • Black Lives Matter protesters: 702 queries targeting Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

Every single one of these happened without a warrant. Every single one was a violation of the spirit (if not the letter) of the Fourth Amendment. And every time these abuses surfaced, the response from leadership was the same: we've implemented new safeguards, we've added training, trust us.

Now Johnson wants us to believe that monthly reports to a Civil Liberties Protection Officer will fix what decades of oversight have failed to prevent. The FBI ran warrantless searches on a US senator and the solution is... a monthly memo?

Who Supports It, Who Doesn't

The bill lands in a narrow gap between two blocs that have already killed two versions this month.

Supporters:

  • Glenn Gerstell, former NSA General Counsel, called it "a pretty reasonable compromise" [2]. Consider the source: the former top lawyer for the agency that runs the collection.
  • Intelligence Committee members who argue 702 is essential for counterterrorism and want clean reauthorization.

Opponents:

  • Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD): Dismissed the bill as continuing the failed policy of FBI self-policing [1].
  • Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA, Freedom Caucus): Said "we're not there yet," signaling that the Freedom Caucus still wants a warrant requirement [1].
  • Elizabeth Goitein, Brennan Center for Justice: Called it "a straight reauthorization" that lacks real substance [3]. She's been tracking 702 reform for years and she's not buying it.
  • A bipartisan coalition of civil liberties groups, from the ACLU to FreedomWorks, that has demanded a warrant requirement since 2013.

The math is brutal for Johnson. He needs the Freedom Caucus and he needs enough Democrats to make up for any Republican defections. The first bill failed because privacy advocates said it didn't go far enough. The second failed because national security hawks said it went too far. This third version tries to thread a needle that may not have an eye.

What Happens If 702 Lapses on April 30

Five days. That's what's left.

The House Rules Committee meets Monday to decide whether Johnson's bill gets a floor vote. If it clears Rules, it hits the floor sometime next week. If it passes the House, the Senate still has to act before April 30 [1].

If 702 lapses:

  • Existing collection continues: Current FISA Court orders authorizing 702 collection run through April 2027. The NSA doesn't stop collecting on May 1.
  • No new certifications: The government can't seek new certifications or expand the program to cover new targets.
  • Political fallout: Whichever party gets blamed for "letting spy powers lapse" eats the attack ads. That's the real pressure driving the timeline.

Intelligence officials have spent weeks warning that a lapse would create a "dangerous gap" in national security. They said the same thing in 2024. Congress passed a last-minute 2 AM extension then too.

The pattern is clear: manufacture urgency, strip out reform provisions under time pressure, pass a clean extension, repeat in a few years. It's worked every single time since 2008.

The Bottom Line

Johnson's third bill adds real accountability measures. Criminal penalties for abuse matter. GAO audits matter. Congressional access to the FISA Court matters.

But none of it addresses the fundamental problem: the FBI can search Americans' private communications without a warrant. That was true before the first vote failed. It was true before the second vote failed. And if this bill passes, it'll be true through 2029.

The Fourth Amendment says the government needs a warrant to search your stuff. Section 702 says it doesn't, as long as the original target was foreign. Three years from now, we'll be having this exact same fight. The only question is how many more warrantless searches of Americans will happen between now and then.

We've been covering this slow-motion failure for weeks. The deadline moves. The bill changes. The warrant requirement never shows up.

References

  1. NPR: After 2 failed votes, Mike Johnson unveils new plan to extend key U.S. spy powers (April 24, 2026)
  2. Washington Times: House GOP makes new bid to overhaul FISA spy laws (April 23, 2026)
  3. Brennan Center for Justice: Congress Is Ready for Surveillance Reform
  4. CNBC: Three things to know about FISA Section 702 (April 17, 2026)

Published: April 25, 2026